Conventional network storage systems may be implemented using the Storage Bridge Bay standard. The Storage Bridge Bay (SBB) specification is a standard for storage solution providers who desire to have a standard controller and slot compatibility between respective controllers which can be manufactured by different organizations. The SBB specification describes the physical requirements for storage canisters and the mid-plane connectors of a storage enclosure. The storage enclosure can house one or more storage canisters. Meanwhile, each storage canister houses at least one printed circuit board having electronics mounted thereon. A current version of the SBB specification, as of this writing, is Storage Bridge Bay Specification, Version 2.0 released Jan. 28, 2008, the entire contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
Storage enclosures are conventionally designed to fit in a standard rack defined in EIA-310. A rack unit (or “U”) is a measurement of height within the rack, where one rack unit equals 44.45 mm or 1.75 inches. A storage or computing device that is embodied within an enclosure that it is one rack unit tall may be referred to as a “1 U” device. Similarly, a storage or computing device that is embodied in an enclosure that is two rack units tall may be referred to as a 2 U device. A given rack can be any height, but is usually 19 or 23 inches tall.
A conventional network application system includes two application servers in different 2 U enclosures, a RAID Bunch of Drives (RBOD) in a 2 U enclosure, and an Expansion Bunch of Drives (EBOD) in a 2 U enclosure, for a total of 8 U taken up by four enclosures. The RBOD includes two storage controllers, and the EBOD includes two expansion Enclosure Service Modules (ESMs). However, conventional techniques for configuring a network storage system may not be as efficient as could be desired.